Analysis/Opinion – August 6, 2019
“Reforming the Postal Service” (Web, July 28) points to USPS’ shipping and package capabilities as its one redeeming quality amid the agency’s rapidly growing losses. USPS’ $143 billion in total unfunded liabilities and debt are disregarded as an afterthought — and apparently so are the nation’s taxpayers who may be forced to save the organization.

The piece claims that $42 billion of USPS’ $144 billion revenue over the past decade comes from parcel delivery. But USPS falsely assumes that packages drive only a small portion of operating costs. During the past decade when USPS “made” profits on packages, the organization didn’t account for billions in costs that stem directly from the impacts of parcel services, which in 2018 accounted for 49 percent of the Postal Service’s delivery weight. The fact that competitive products are only required to cover 8.8 percent of USPS‘ fails to reflect the totality of its high-volume, weight-intensive parcel services that continue to place immense stress on the nation’s postal system.

Stakeholders, policymakers and taxpayers have no reliable way of understanding or justifying USPS’ calculations. The full scope of USPS’ operations needs to be examined for sustainability in its entirety in order to determine the real costs to the federal government — and ultimately the taxpayer.

Ross Marchand
Director of Policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Source: Washington Times